


Teacups

by eye_of_a_cat



Category: Babylon 5
Genre: F/M, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-17
Updated: 2018-06-17
Packaged: 2019-05-24 16:30:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 763
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14958128
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eye_of_a_cat/pseuds/eye_of_a_cat
Summary: Sheridan and Lochley, many years before the series.





	Teacups

They couldn't afford much back then. There was the furniture that came with the place once they'd signed the lease, laughing over how she'd misspelled the new name - a table, three chairs that didn't match, a bed with an uneven mattress and a rust-coloured sofa faded in the sun. It didn't matter, they told each other. It was temporary, they'd find somewhere better soon. And anyway, they had each other, and they'd have their careers worked out once they managed to get stationed somewhere together, and he thought all this was fun.  
  
The day they moved in, they spent three hours combing through the things other tenants had left behind. Three books covered in dust told A Dramatic Tale Of Love, Heartbreak And Hope, and they read out paragraphs to each other in serious tones until she complained he'd ruined the ending and he started to laugh. There was a pack of playing cards missing the eight of diamonds and all the aces, and a bag of rice at the back of a kitchen cupboard that looked like it was starting to sprout things. And there were teacups, six white china teacups with matching saucers carefully wrapped in newspaper in a broken crate. "You think someone forgot to take them?" he said, and she shook her head.  
  
Nobody else would understand, that was the thing. Their families would say it was too young and too soon, but there'd been no point in waiting when they could get stationed so far apart, and it felt good to curl up together in the afternoon and plan out their future.  
  
Maybe it wasn't perfect. They argued a lot, argued about stupid things, and every time she swore she wasn't going to be the one to back down. Still, she would eventually - or he would, and afterwards it didn't really matter which. She knew they could get past that, though. The rest of the time was worth every screaming row they could ever have. And they'd have coped and things would have settled down, and it would all have been fine.  
  
If it wasn't for the teacups, she'd have kept believing that.  
  
It happened on a day that brought endless, miserable sheets of rain down from an unrelenting grey sky. She was sitting by the windowsill that was all dead flies and peeling paint, and he curled an arm around her shoulders - this didn't get to him, _nothing_ got to him, he still thought living here was _fun_ \- and tried to cheer her up. "It's not so bad," he said. "We've got each other. And, hey, we've got six china teacups. What more does anyone need?"  
  
She laughed. "That was so -" she began, and then realised. "Never mind."  
  
"That was so what?"  
  
"You just reminded me of someone."  
  
It was Zoe, half-drunk and cobwebs in her hair and barefoot because she'd kicked off her shoes, scrabbling underneath the floorboards in that old hotel. She'd seen something just out of reach, and she was even more determined to get it for all the warnings that it wasn't worth trying, although they both kept laughing and she couldn't reach - "This could be someone's buried treasure! You'll thank me when you're rich." And when she finally got hold, and it was a box of old nails, she'd blown the hair back from her forehead and looked at it solemnly. "Nails," she said. "What more could we have asked for?"  
  
He asked, of course. And she'd have told him eventually, she'd always planned to. Just not now.  
  
It was the worst fight they'd ever had, worse than the time she smashed the kitchen light. It went on for so long that the neighbours banged on the walls, not that it made any difference, and she was sick with fury and tears and screaming at him to just, for God's sake, let this one go. When she gave in, telling him about Zoe was all the ammunition she'd got left.  
  
"My God," he said quietly. "I didn't - I'm sorry. I had no idea." And in a sudden afterthought of irration, "How come you never said?"  
  
"After the way you just acted, you're wondering why I never said?"  
  
He rubbed at his face. "That's fair. It's just - I couldn't understand why you weren't telling me."  
  
"You don't understand anything," she said.  
  
The sun was pale through the clouds. She wrapped her arms around her knees to watch it, exhausted. He didn't reach out to touch her. "We'll make it work," he said.  
  
But for the first time, they both knew he was lying.


End file.
